Eginhard

, who flourished in the ninth century, was the celebrated secretary and supposed son-in-law of Charlemagne. He is said to have been carried through the snow on the shoulders of his affectionate and ingenious mistress Imma, to prevent his being tracked from her apartments by the emperor her father: a story which the elegant pen of Addison has copied and embellished from an old German chronicle, and inserted in the third volume of the Spectator, This happy lover (supposing the story to be true) seems to have possessed a heart not unworthy of so enchanting a mistress, and to have returned her affection with the most faithful attachment for there is a | letter of Eginhard’s still extant, lamenting the death of his wife, which is written in the tenderest strain of connubial affliction; it does not, however, express that this lady was the affectionate princess, and indeed some late critics have proved that Imina was not the daughter of Charlemagne. Eginhard, however, appears to have been a native of Germany, and educated by the munificence of his imperial master, of which he has left the most grateful testimony in his preface to the life of that monarch. After the loss of his lamented wife, he is supposed to have passed the remainder of his days in religious retirement, and to have died soon after the year 840. His life of Charlemagne, written in a style superior to that of his age, his annals from 741 to 889, and his letters, are all inserted in the second volume of Duchesne’s “Scriptores Francorum.” But there is an improved edition of this valuable historian, with the annotations of Hermann Schmincke, in 4to, 1711, and another yet more improved by professor Bredow, in 1806. ¹